single bad characteristic. She is remarkably stable and will trim up so well you can fly her with your fingers.
Of course, the way we flew them was a little different from what Olive Beach’s genius husband had in mind when he designed it. We flew them into very short PSP (pegged steel plank) greasy and wet bumpy hastily constructed strips. You had to hang them on the props with full flaps and gear and plant them on the first 10’, getting the tail on the ground hard with the stick pulled as far back as you can, steering with brakes, sliding and skidding to a nasty, semi-controlled stop before rolling off into the trees, hills or whatever.
We carried freight of all kinds and all kinds of passengers. Many Vietnamese rode Air America and we never knew who they were- friend or foe. The story was that in the daylight they were all friendly rice pickers but at night, they picked up AK’s and ran all over shooting up round eyes. The village chiefs were supposed to only place friendly types on our flights but, who knows. If you tell a guy that you will chop him up if he doesn’t give you a travel pass- what are you going to do?
CHAPTER 7
THE DC-3
“I came to admire this machine which could lift virtually any load strapped to its back and carry it anywhere in any weather, safely and dependably. The C-47 groaned, it protested, it rattled, it leaked oil, it ran hot, it ran cold, it ran rough, it staggered along on hot days and scared you half to death, its wings flexed and twisted in a horrifying manner, it sank back to earth with a great sigh of relief - but it flew and it flew and it flew.”
— Len Morgan. The C-47 was the U.S. military designation for the DC-3.
Let me try to explain the idea here. The inbound bearing back to the Vung Tau degrees or the exact reciprocal ( 230 -180= 50 & 50 + 180 - 230) The aircraft flies over the station and turns outbound heading 50 degrees and the pilot tries to fly left or right in order to center the aircraft on the published outbound bearing. To do this the pilot sees only the half pointer in the bottom of a clock like round instrument . When he is steering 050 degrees, away from the airport and the half needle on the fixed compass card needle reads 170 degrees, he has to know that he is flying on the forty degree bearing from the station and is then 10 degrees north of the correct course and will have to fly to his right to center on the proscribed bearing as depicted on the published instrument approach.
All the while you’re trying to figure all this out, you have to wear this miserable plastic hood, so you can’t see outside, fly the aircraft, retard the throttles, descend as required, call for the approach and landing check lists and , in a proficiency check, you can be sure that the instructor will fail and engine on you in the procedure turn. Now you have to deal with engine out checklists and still fly the approach. The instructors knew very well how difficult this was with the miserable “fixed card” ADF’s and of course, at Vung Tau, the cross winds never stopped blowing. But, what the hell, “ who ever promised you a rose garden?”
Somehow, I managed to fool the check airmen and they turned me loose in the Diesel three. I just love this old bird. I was then twenty-eight and the aircraft had been built before I was born. Even today, years later, there are still a lot of DC-3’s flying and they will still be long after I’m gone.
The “gooney Bird,” is not the easiest aircraft to fly but she is a long way from the hardest. The trickiest thing is to learn to handle the tail wheel and cross winds. Aside from these areas, the DC-3 is the gentlest and finest flying machine ever built. Taking off, the pilot can’t see the nose and has to keep her straight by lining her up on the distant end of the runway. The pilot has to sense any directional deviation long before it is apparent and gently make almost imperceptible corrections. Once the tail comes off the ground, at about forty or fifty, depending on the wind, one “steers” the DC-3 with her ailerons, which are huge and positioned way out on the one hundred and five foot wings, are more effective than the rudder. If the aircraft is drifting left the pilot gently turns the yoke to the right and the starboard aileron will rise and drag more than the left one will dip and the old bird will drift right. There is nothing in the book that tells you this, you just have to learn.
We were paid hourly for flying “in-country,” which the company euphemistically referred to as “project pay” meaning anyplace you could get a bullet up your ass. This, plus the base pay and housing allowance, added up to a lot more than I would have made as a Navy lieutenant driving a plastic river boat getting shot at all the time. However, the very best deal by far was flying the DC-3’s to Taiwan for maintenance and then bringing one back. You were out of Vietnam for a few days and only were paid base salary, so how could this beat flying in country?
My co-pilot, a wily Taiwanese ex-fighter pilot, had political connections and wound up flying with Air America. He was twenty years my senior and a hell of a lot smarter. He said, “Rabert, I think the aircraft might break when we get to Hong Kong.” “Really,” I said, “Why, it’s flying great?” I understood him better when we landed and he paid the mechanic a hundred bucks. Magically, the right main strut went flat and had to be re-sealed.
We jumped on a hydrofoil and were in Macau in two hours buying gold. He had told me to bring as much real money as I could and I had about five thousand in “green” ( USD). We were supposed to turn in our dollars on entering the country and get MPC (military payment coupons,“funny money”) which the Vietnamese couldn’t exchange. The idea was to keep hard currency from the enemy as much as possible. I had been in Bangkok the month before and had brought the five large with me.
We
